Avilla Freedom Festival Author After-Action Report

I thought this title was nicely official sounding and also just alliterative enough.

Anyway, the longest book signing in history, featuring two somewhat introverted people who are a bit averse to crowds and noise going to a festival, is over. By now you've all seen a photo of either me or Emily at the display table, which Emily laid out after telling me to go do something else. But here's a photo of the table with Emily and a guest who stopped by: My father, Delbert. They're munching on caramel corn at this moment, which we'll talk more about later.

The first surprise was when we were setting up on vendor's row, and I discovered my cousin Earl has a booth right next to us. (I bought some antique coins from him.) In this photo that's his place on the left.

Then it turned out one of the people on the other side from us was a woman I used to work with in the emergency services. Unfortunately for me, among other things they were selling some truly yummy chocolatey stuff. Then the Noble County Gas and Steam Association set up across from us and started making caramel corn ... from scratch, in an actual kettle.

 Is this in any way fair to a guy who needs to make dollars, not gain pounds? Don't even get me started on the bacon, lettuce, and deep fried green tomato sandwiches they were selling down the way.

We were within sight of the stage, and over a three day period were treated to, among other things, bluegrass, 80s glam rock, country, rap, and the kiddie queen and king contest. Below is a long distance photo of Cougar Hunters, who I take it were hunting not large cats but older women.

 There was also a festival going on, and every once in awhile I got to walk around and take a look, although of course not so much at the busy times.

 Car show, too. Maybe I'll do more of a post on that later.

So, how did we do book sale-wise? Well, the first two days were kind of a disappointment, by which I mean a substantial disappointment. Still, by the end of the second day we broke even on our one-time expenses. By the middle of the third day we'd made up what we spent on other things, like the canopy and a folding table of our very own.

If it had been a typical three or four hour book signing, I'd be crowing about the sales we made. Spread out over three days it wasn't so spectacular, but we did well Saturday afternoon and evening. We also got some bites--gave away business cars and bookmarks to people who, hopefully, will go on the website, or Amazon, or B&N, and make some purchases. That's one of the reasons we do public appearances anyway: to get the word out. I also got to do a blurb on the local radio station.

The one thing I've found strange is that so far we have't sold all that many copies of Radio Red -- the newest release. But that will come.